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LITERACY STANDARDS IN AUSTRALIAContents
OverviewLiteracy Standards In Australia is a report compiled by the Australian Council for Educational Research. The reading and writing performance standards in this report reflect the standards embodied in the work being carried out under the direction of the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs to develop literacy benchmarks for Australian schools. Assessment tasks from the 1996 National School English Literacy Survey are used to illustrate - through concrete examples - Year 3 and Year 5 student performances in relation to the benchmark standard in reading and writing. A benchmark standard is the minimum acceptable standard level of literacy and numeracy, without which a student will have difficulty making sufficient progress at school. Key findings for the main sample of students
A Wide Range of Student Performance
Key findings for particular groups of students
MAPPING LITERACY ACHIEVEMENT: RESULTS OF THE 1996 NATIONAL SCHOOL ENGLISH LITERACY SURVEY Contents
Mapping Literacy: Results of the 1996 National School English Literacy Survey reports the results of a sample survey of over 8,200 Australian children in Year 3 and Year 5. The Survey was conducted in government and non-government schools in all States and Territories of Australia. Aspects of literacy covered in the report are: Reading, Writing (including Spelling),
Speaking, Listening and Viewing. The gap between the literacy achievements of the highest and lowest achieving students in both Year 3 and Year 5 is very wide. The survey shows that in a typical class, the top 10% of students are performing about five grade levels above the bottom 10% of students. Students’ enjoyment of literacy activities in class declines between Year 3 and Year 5. Students who report higher levels of enjoyment of literacy activities in class tend to be those with higher levels of literacy achievement. Between Year 3 and Year 5, most students progress more rapidly in the receptive areas
of literacy, that is reading, viewing and listening compared with the expressive areas of
literacy, ie writing and speaking. Literacy achievement by particular groups of students In each aspect of literacy, girls consistently outperform boys, and this does not change significantly between Year 3 and Year 5. Students from a language background other than English have, on average, lower English literacy levels than students from English speaking backgrounds. Literacy achievement of children varies according to the occupation of parents.
Findings related to Indigenous Students Students in the Special Indigenous Sample have very low average levels of English literacy achievement, (3 to 4 year levels below students in the main sample). There is a wide range in the literacy achievements of the highest and lowest achieving Indigenous students, with evidence that the lowest achieving Year 3 Indigenous students make little or no progress over the following two years. Students in the Special Indigenous Sample have relatively high rates of absence from school and this higher rate of absence appears to be a factor in the lower literacy achievements of these students. English literacy achievements of Indigenous students increase with the frequency of
speaking English at home. (About 30% of Indigenous students sampled do not normally speak
English at home.) Factors associated with literacy achievement Higher levels of student English literacy achievement were associated with:
Student factors associated with higher levels of English literacy achievement included:
Background Information on the National School English Literacy Survey The National School English Literacy Survey (NSELS) was conducted in August and September 1996. The Survey collected data from a nationally representative sample of over 7000 students at Years 3 and 5 (the ‘Main Sample’). In addition, the Survey collected data from a special sample of nearly 800 Indigenous students. This sample (the ‘Special Indigenous Sample’) was not nationally representative of all Indigenous students but of a sample of students, a significant proportion of whom live in rural and remote parts of the country. The purpose of the Survey was to collect reliable national base-line data on literacy achievements of Australian school children in Years 3 and 5. While all States now assess literacy and numeracy skills in the early Primary years in some way, this is not done in a consistent manner to enable firm conclusions to be drawn about literacy levels in Australia. The Survey was a collaborative exercise funded by the Federal Government and conducted by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). The methodology for the Survey was developed collaboratively over an eighteen month period, with the support of government and non-government education authorities, professional literacy associations, teacher unions, parents and the business sector. The Survey collected two kinds of evidence of literacy achievement. First, students completed a set of standardised tasks (‘Common Tasks’) in reading, writing, viewing, speaking and listening, which were aligned to the national curriculum profile in English. Second, samples of classroom work were collected for writing and speaking. These ‘Best Work’ samples were assembled within specified categories of student work. The Survey also involved:
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